Risk of new nuclear proliferation cycle, Australia's defence minister warns

By Kirsty Needham

SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia's Defence Minister Richard Marles will on Saturday highlight the risk of a new cycle of nuclear proliferation in Europe and Asia, driven by China's rapid nuclear modernisation, Russia's strategic ties to North Korea and lapsed treaties.

The Cold War arms control framework focused on numbers, warhead types and delivery systems is inadequate to grapple with the weaponisation of space, cyber and the ability to integrate nuclear weapons with autonomous systems, Marles is expected to tell the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian security forum.

"We also have to counter the grim, potentially imminent, possibility of another wave of global nuclear proliferation as states seek security in a new age of imperial ambition," excerpts of his speech seen by Reuters say.

In the speech Marles criticises Russia for threatening to use nuclear weapons in its conflict with Ukraine, which gave up its nuclear arsenal decades earlier, and says the probability Russia is transferring nuclear weapons technology to North Korea places "intolerable pressure on South Korea".

"China's decision to pursue rapid nuclear modernisation and expansion, which aims in part to reach parity with or surpass the United States, is another reason the future of strategic arms control must be revitalised," he is expected to say.

There is a risk of a new proliferation cycle that jeopardises the U.S. extended nuclear deterrence arrangement, he says.

Marles will repeat Australia's assurances that the nuclear powered and conventionally armed submarines it is acquiring from the United States in the next decade under AUKUS comply with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

Defence ministers, senior military and security officials and diplomats from around the world are attending the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore from May 30-June 1.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham; editing by Giles Elgood)